Pages

Sunday, 24 November 2013

And all the while I am writing this, there are people
trudging their way to Europe thousands of feet under me. I have a cousin who
crossed the desert to get to Spain once. Not a first cousin. I distinguish not
to distance our association but because I hope no first cousin of mine would
ever be reduced to such straits. Even if they fell off the road to prosperity,
the family net would catch them but the further you radiate from my father and
his brothers to their cousins and cousin’s cousins, the net grows weaker till
only a few strands remains, dangling weakly, straws for drowning men to clutch
at. He crossed the Sahara, miles and miles of sand, only to be sent back after
a few months in Spain.

I saw a patch of grey a few minutes ago and I wondered if it
was an oasis. I met this desert crossing cousin of mine very briefly. He came
to see my dad in the hospital. If England looks like a living organ still
pumping sap, the Sahara looks like a dead organ, dried and exhibited for study
in the lab, the cross section of dried tissues and vessels cut open for
students and airplane passengers to look into. This is the desiccation of the
world. Some of the patterns on the ground look like waves, waves petrified in
motion, forever about to break free and continue their surge forward.

When my cousin who walked across these dried waves came to
see my dad, we (Dinachi and I) dropped into the office briefly. We greeted him
warmly, in the way you greet strangers who you have just been told are your
relatives. He did not look like someone that had needed to cross the Sahara. He
was lanky not thin and he was smartly dressed in dark colours, either brown or
black. I remember what I was wearing. Flared blue jeans with zip pockets in
front bough from America, a size 5 not 7 even though my first cousins in
America thought I was more a 7. And a pink tank top with a cartoon monkey on
it, whose provenance is unknown but which I am certain I did not buy. It was a
gift but I cannot remember from whom. I had just been to the bank with my
mother, the purpose of my trip I have forgotten but it was just before I moved
to England. Anyway, I met my cousin, we shook hands with adequate smiles and
then we left.

Later on, my mother told me his story. She said he looked at
us like special children, like the children of a rich man who was enjoying life
but we were his cousins. It wasn’t an acquisitive look but it was a look that
said, ‘that could have been me.’ We come from the same stock. The context of my
mother saying this was that my father had offered to sponsor his higher
education. He had declined and asked for sponsorship to go to Europe instead,
by air presumably this second time not by road. This was where he wanted to
continue his life and possibly finished school. It seemed preposterous to my
father but my mother sympathised with this cousin of mine. He saw his relatives
sending their children to schools in Europe and America, he saw their children
enjoying, epitomised by myself in my tight jeans and monkey shirt and why
should he not want that? Entitlement is a funny thing. On some level we all
have it. We feel entitled to the world. That’s why we wake up every morning and
go out into it. I don’t know one singularity about his character, except what I
can extrapolate from his willingness to cross the Sahara on foot. He might have
been a great explorer in another life, Mungo Park, Livingstone, Stanley, the
last especially with tenacity and demons driving them on. Instead, in the 21st
Century, he ended up another immigrant deported back to his country, doing in
six hours on a plane what is had taken over six weeks to do on foot.

I have been writing for almost an hour. We have 2:04 hours
left of flight time. When I started I think it was 2:59.

16 minutes left. There is a harmattan haze over Lagos so
even though we’re so close I can’t see a thing. I much prefer a morning flight
actually. I only had brief nap but during the day time, that’s when you realise
that 6 hours of travel is not that much. Just three BBC documentaries and a
couple of hours of reading, journaling and playing games on my ipad. The ground
below is still very scrubby and dusty but it can’t be Northern Nigeria. This
plane is fast but it can’t cover that distance so fast. The plane is trembling
a little bit. Not jolting up and down in turbulence but trembling. I wish I
knew why. When you know the reason behind every strange noise and rumble, you
grow less fearful. Maybe I should learn how to fly. Skip driving.

We just flew over some lakes with green land pushing into
them, mysterious puzzle shapes of moss. Nigeria is very green, very dark green.
I can see a red dusty line running through the verdure, unpaved earth leading
perhaps to a village with no running water. The plane has stopped trembling. We
are floating noiselessly. The land isn’t parcelled out in square strips like in
Europe. No patchwork here. Just green and more green. Plenty of room for modern
agriculture. Another red line running through the green. I wonder what state
we’re flying over.

Now suddenly, the sprawl of houses begin. Welcome to Lagos.
I’m right opposite the sun. Its cloaked in dust. Harmattan makes it almost
possible to look the sun in the eye. We’re back to green again. Those houses
weren’t in Lagos or at least not Lagos proper. The land makes its own pattern
here. A clump of trees, some scrub, some open grass, once in a while
intersected by dirt lines like scars. Ooh a tarmac road. The woman behind me
said, ‘It looks like Scotland.’ Her boyfriend I think is Nigerian. He has no
hair on the sides of his head, on purpose I think. In the middle is a long top
knot of dreadlocks sitting in a prim bun. 4 minutes remaining according to my
clock and still no sign of Lagos. Clock must be wrong. Lagos is drowning from
the ocean and the North is drowning from the Sahara. Houses scattered in the
green, haphazardly from this height is seems. What need for order in such
space.

A little oasis of green grass in what has become a sprawl
now.

‘Look at how densely….’

‘It’s just haphazard.’

My fellow passengers.

I have seen a church from the sky, pink roof and cream
walls, and a rubbish heap and some tiny fires burning on a smaller dump. The
roads are much nicer in Lagos. Actually I just saw one that looks like eczema.
I can see into people’s compounds now. The man behind me is thanking God we
arrived safely. Touchdown. It’s good to be home.

Thursday, 14 November 2013

Instead of spending 6 hours watching movies on my last flight home, I decided to write and record the experience live and direct. Here's part one of my musings.
Separate the waters. I'm on the British Airways flight to Nigeria. From the air on a clear sunny day with no clouds, the blue of the sky and of the sea merge into one on the horizon. All around is blue, no up and no down. Flying over England, the land below reminded me of sayings like the land is in the blood or the blood of England flows through your veins. It really did look like an organ with the thick lines of trees like arteries and veins and capillaries carrying thick green sap to England's people. And who are England's people?

The couple next to me are old. They sneeze and splutter and cough a lot. They cover their mouths when they do. Their hands seem ineffectual. Many germs escape I fear and mostly on to me but their politeness is appreciated. We are over France now. Just across the Channel and the landscape seems dryer, more arid and the pieces of the farmland jigsaw are smaller and browner. There also seem to be fewer trees or maybes it's because we're higher up. Some quite persistent turbulence. I am drinking Coke. I fear for your pages. The engine roar grows louder for a moment and then quietens down. I used the loo before I got on the plane but will it be enough? The flight has quite a few empty seats. Perhaps BA is not longer so popular, colonial mentality unwinding.

We're flying over what must be the Sahara Desert now. It's not the Sahara of shifting sands that is so popular in the imagination but the part of the desert that is craggy and brown, unending dryness to the front and the back of the plane. The ground is so unchanging it doesn't feel like we're moving at all. There are thin cracks in the land that look like the beds of where river and streams once flowed. We are leaving behind the crags now and moving on to the more archetypal Sahara. The cracks in the old Sahara look like dried up capillaries and veins, arid England. There are some depressions in the sand. They must be quite deep but from up here they look like pockmarks.

There is a dark thin ribbon running along the ground for what must be miles. It looks like a grey tarmac road but it can't be. Once you have a fixed point to look from, you realise how fast we're moving. In the few seconds it took to write this, the strange road has already disappeared beyond craning distance. I will make a way in the desert God says in Isaiah, where rivers of living water will flow. There's a patch of sand a lot redder than the rest of the desert, like a birthmark. There are lines running through the desert, swirling and sweeping and it makes you almost think there must be a pattern, some cosmic Artist whose handwork you would be able to fully appreciate if only you could go a little higher. That's how they saw the Nazca lines. They flew.

About Me

My name is Chibundu Onuzo and I'm a Nigerian author/writer/PhD Student. My first novel, The Spider King's Daughter is out now. You can email me at authorsoundsbetterthanwriter@gmail.com or for serious, business related things, email Rachel Conway, rachel@capelland.co.uk